Everybody “seems at Loggerheads—There’s Hunt infatuated—there’s Haydon’s picture in statu quo—There’s Hunt walks up and down his painting room—criticising every head most unmercifully. There’s Horace Smith tired of Hunt. ‘The web of our life is of mingled yarn.’... I am quite disgusted with literary men and will never know another except Wordsworth—no not even Byron. Here is an instance of the friendship of such. Haydon and Hunt have known each other many years.... Haydon says to me, Keats, don’t show your lines to Hunt on any Account or he will have done half for you—so it appears Hunt wishes it to be thought. When he met Reynolds in the Theatre, John told him that I was getting on to the completion of 4,000 lines—Ah! says Hunt, had it not been for me they would have been 7,000! If he will say this to Reynolds, what would he to other people? Haydon received a Letter a little while back on this subject from some Lady—which contains a caution to me, thro’ him, on the subject—now is not all this a most paultry (sic) thing to think about?”[121]
Everybody “seems at Loggerheads—There’s Hunt infatuated—there’s Haydon’s picture in statu quo—There’s Hunt walks up and down his painting room—criticising every head most unmercifully. There’s Horace Smith tired of Hunt. ‘The web of our life is of mingled yarn.’... I am quite disgusted with literary men and will never know another except Wordsworth—no not even Byron. Here is an instance of the friendship of such. Haydon and Hunt have known each other many years.... Haydon says to me, Keats, don’t show your lines to Hunt on any Account or he will have done half for you—so it appears Hunt wishes it to be thought. When he met Reynolds in the Theatre, John told him that I was getting on to the completion of 4,000 lines—Ah! says Hunt, had it not been for me they would have been 7,000! If he will say this to Reynolds, what would he to other people? Haydon received a Letter a little while back on this subject from some Lady—which contains a caution to me, thro’ him, on the subject—now is not all this a most paultry (sic) thing to think about?”[121]
Hunt had tried to persuade Keats not to write a long poem. Keats wrote of this: “Hunt’s dissuasion was of no avail[122]—I refused to visit Shelley that I might have my own unfettered scope; and after all, I shall have the reputation of Hunt’s élève. His corrections and amputations will by the knowing ones be traced in the poem.”[123]
During 1818, Leigh Hunt in his critical work remained silent concerning Keats, probably because of his sincere disapproval ofEndymionand secondly, because he realized that hispraise would be injurious. The attacks on Hunt inBlackwood’sand theQuarterlyhad foreshadowed an attack of the same virulent kind on Keats. The realization came with the publication ofEndymion. The article on “Johnny Keats,” fourth of the series on the Cockney School inBlackwood’s Magazine, appeared almost simultaneously with his return from Scotland, and the one in theQuarterlyin September of the same year. These will be discussed in a later chapter. Suspicions of neglect on the part of Hunt murmured in Keats’s mind like a discordant undertone, although the friendship continued as warm as ever on Hunt’s part. Keats was passive, without, however, the old sense of dependence and trust. December 28, 1817, he writes to his brothers of the “drivelling egotism” ofThe Examinerarticle on the obsoletion of Christmas gambols and pastimes.[124]In a journal letter written to George Keats and his wife in Louisville during December and January, 1819, the old liking has become almost repugnance: “Hunt keeps on in his old way—I am completely tired of it all. He has lately published a Pocket Book called the literary Pocket-Book—full of the most sickening stuff you can imagine”;[125]yet Keats suffered himself to become a contributor to this same book with two sonnets,The Human SeasonsandTo Ailsa Rock. Again in the same letter:
“The night we went to Novello’s there was a complete set-to of Mozart and punning. I was so completely tired of it that if I were to follow my own inclinations I should never meet any of that set again, not even Hunt who is certainly a pleasant fellow in the main when you are with him, but in reality he is vain, egotistical, and disgusting in matters of taste and morals. He understands many a beautiful thing; but then, instead of giving other minds credit for the same degree of perception as he himself possesses,—he begins an explanation in such a curious manner that our taste and self-love is offended continually. Hunt does one harm by making fine things petty and beautiful things hateful. Through him I am indifferent to Mozart, I care not for white Busts—and many a glorious thing when associated with him becomes a nothing.”[126]
“The night we went to Novello’s there was a complete set-to of Mozart and punning. I was so completely tired of it that if I were to follow my own inclinations I should never meet any of that set again, not even Hunt who is certainly a pleasant fellow in the main when you are with him, but in reality he is vain, egotistical, and disgusting in matters of taste and morals. He understands many a beautiful thing; but then, instead of giving other minds credit for the same degree of perception as he himself possesses,—he begins an explanation in such a curious manner that our taste and self-love is offended continually. Hunt does one harm by making fine things petty and beautiful things hateful. Through him I am indifferent to Mozart, I care not for white Busts—and many a glorious thing when associated with him becomes a nothing.”[126]
Continuing in the same strain:
“I will have no more Wordsworth or Hunt in particular. Why should we be of the tribe of Manasseh when we can wander with Esau? Why shouldwe kick against the Pricks, when we can walk on Roses?... I don’t mean to deny Wordsworth’s grandeur and Hunt’s merit, but I mean to say that we need not to be teazed with grandeur and merit, when we can have them uncontaminated and unobtrusive. Let us have the old Poets and Robin Hood.”[127]
“I will have no more Wordsworth or Hunt in particular. Why should we be of the tribe of Manasseh when we can wander with Esau? Why shouldwe kick against the Pricks, when we can walk on Roses?... I don’t mean to deny Wordsworth’s grandeur and Hunt’s merit, but I mean to say that we need not to be teazed with grandeur and merit, when we can have them uncontaminated and unobtrusive. Let us have the old Poets and Robin Hood.”[127]
And again:
“Hunt has damned Hampstead and masks and sonnets and Italian tales. Wordsworth has damned the lakes—Milman has damned the old drama—West has damned wholesale. Peacock has damned satire—Ollier has damned Music—Hazlitt has damned the bigoted and the blue-stockinged; how durst the Man?!”[128]
“Hunt has damned Hampstead and masks and sonnets and Italian tales. Wordsworth has damned the lakes—Milman has damned the old drama—West has damned wholesale. Peacock has damned satire—Ollier has damned Music—Hazlitt has damned the bigoted and the blue-stockinged; how durst the Man?!”[128]
A parody on the conversation of Hunt’s set, in which he is the principal actor, carries with it a ridicule that is unkinder than the bitterness of dislike, and difficult to reconcile with the fact that Keats at the same time preserved the semblance of friendship.[129]
“Scene, a little Parlour—Enter Hunt—Gattie—Hazlitt—Mrs. Novello—Ollier.Gattie:—Ha! Hunt got into your new house? Ha! Mrs. Novello: seen Altam and his wife?Mrs. N.: Yes (with a grin) it’s Mr. Hunt’s isn’t it?Gattie: Hunt’s? no, ha! Mr. Ollier, I congratulate you upon the highest compliment I ever heard paid to the Book. Mr. Hazlitt, I hope you are well.Hazlitt:—Yes Sir, no Sir—Mr. Hunt(at the Music) ‘La Biondina’ etc. Hazlitt, did you ever hear this?—“La Biondina” &c.Hazlitt: O no Sir—I never—Ollier:—Do Hunt give it us over again—divine—Gattie:—divino—Hunt when does your Pocket-Book come out—Hunt:—‘What is this absorbs me quite?’ O we are spinning on a little, we shall floridize soon I hope. Such a thing was very much wanting—people think of nothing but money getting—now for me I am rather inclined to the liberal side of things. I am reckoned lax in my Christian principles, etc., etc., etc., etc.”[130]
“Scene, a little Parlour—Enter Hunt—Gattie—Hazlitt—Mrs. Novello—Ollier.Gattie:—Ha! Hunt got into your new house? Ha! Mrs. Novello: seen Altam and his wife?Mrs. N.: Yes (with a grin) it’s Mr. Hunt’s isn’t it?Gattie: Hunt’s? no, ha! Mr. Ollier, I congratulate you upon the highest compliment I ever heard paid to the Book. Mr. Hazlitt, I hope you are well.Hazlitt:—Yes Sir, no Sir—Mr. Hunt(at the Music) ‘La Biondina’ etc. Hazlitt, did you ever hear this?—“La Biondina” &c.Hazlitt: O no Sir—I never—Ollier:—Do Hunt give it us over again—divine—Gattie:—divino—Hunt when does your Pocket-Book come out—Hunt:—‘What is this absorbs me quite?’ O we are spinning on a little, we shall floridize soon I hope. Such a thing was very much wanting—people think of nothing but money getting—now for me I am rather inclined to the liberal side of things. I am reckoned lax in my Christian principles, etc., etc., etc., etc.”[130]
Such a dual attitude in Keats can be explained only by a dual feeling in his mind, for it is impossible to believe him capable of deliberate deceit. He may have realized Hunt’s affectation and superficiality and “disgusting taste”; he was probably swayed by Haydon to distrust Hunt’s morals; the suspicions planted by Haydon concerningEndymionrankled; but at the same time Hunt’s charm of personality, and the assistance and encouragement given in the first days of theirfriendship, formed a bond difficult to break. Of Leigh Hunt’s attitude there can be no doubt, for through his long life of more than threescore years and ten, filled with many friendships of many kinds, he can in no instance be charged with insincerity. There is no conclusive proof on record to show him deserving of the insinuations which Keats believed in respect toEndymion, for Haydon is not trustworthy, and the opinion of a lady given through Haydon may be dismissed on the same grounds.[131]Reynolds’ testimony is not damaging in itself, and in the absence of facts to the contrary may have been wrongly construed by Keats. To the charges against himself, Leigh Hunt has replied in the following passage, “affecting and persuasive in its unrestrained pathos of remonstrance”:[132]
“an irritable morbidity appears even to have driven his suspicions to excess; and this not only with regard to the acquaintance whom he might reasonably suppose to have had some advantages over him, but to myself, who had none; for I learned the other day, with extreme pain, such as I am sure so kind and reflecting a man as Mr. Monckton Milnes would not have inflicted on me could he have foreseen it, that Keats at one period of his intercourse suspected Shelley and myself of a wish to see him undervalued! Such are the tricks which constant infelicity can play with the most noble natures. For Shelley, letAdonaisanswer. For myself, let every word answer which I uttered about him, living and dead, and such as I now proceed to repeat. I might as well have been told that I wished to see the flowers or the stars undervalued, or my own heart that loved him.”[133]
“an irritable morbidity appears even to have driven his suspicions to excess; and this not only with regard to the acquaintance whom he might reasonably suppose to have had some advantages over him, but to myself, who had none; for I learned the other day, with extreme pain, such as I am sure so kind and reflecting a man as Mr. Monckton Milnes would not have inflicted on me could he have foreseen it, that Keats at one period of his intercourse suspected Shelley and myself of a wish to see him undervalued! Such are the tricks which constant infelicity can play with the most noble natures. For Shelley, letAdonaisanswer. For myself, let every word answer which I uttered about him, living and dead, and such as I now proceed to repeat. I might as well have been told that I wished to see the flowers or the stars undervalued, or my own heart that loved him.”[133]
Hunt’s feeling towards Keats is nowhere better expressed than in hisAutobiography: “I could not love him as deeply as I did Shelley. That was impossible. But my affection was only second to the one which I entertained for that heart of hearts.”[134]
Keats’s atonement is contained in the last letter that he ever wrote: “If I recover, I will do all in my power to correct themistakes made during sickness, and if I should not, all my faults will be forgiven.”[135]
Haydon’s influence over Keats was at its height in 1817 and 1818.[136]His gifts and his enthusiasm, his “fresh magnificence”[137]carried Keats by storm. It was not until about July 1818 that a reaction against Haydon in favor of Hunt set in, brought about by money transactions between Keats and Haydon, and the indifference of the latter in repaying a debt when he knew Keats’s necessity.[138]Keats probably never ceased to feel that Hunt’s influence as a poet had been injurious, as indeed it was, but the relative stability of his two friends adjusted itself after this experience with Haydon. Affairs seem to have been smoothed over with Hunt, and were not disturbed again until a short time before Keats’s departure for Italy, when his morbid suspicions, which even led him to accuse his friend Brown of flirting with Fanny Brawne,[139]seem to have been renewed.
In 1820, Brown, with whom Keats had been living since his brother Tom’s death, went on a second tour to Scotland. Keats, unable to accompany him, took a lodging in Wesleyan Place, Kentish Town, to be near Hunt, who was living in Mortimer Street. Brown says: “It was his choice, during my absence to lodge at Kentish Town, that he might be near his friend, Leigh Hunt, in whose companionship he was ever happy.”[140]In a letter to Fanny Brawne, Keats said Hunt “amuses me very kindly.”[141]It is not likely, judging from this overture, that there had ever been an actual cessation of intercourse, notwithstanding what Keats wrote in his letters; and the act points to a revival of the old feeling on his part. About the twenty-second or twenty-third of June, 1820, Keats lefthis rooms and moved to Leigh Hunt’s home to be nursed.[142]He remained about seven weeks with the family, when there occurred an unfortunate incident which resulted in his abrupt departure August 12, 1820. A letter of Fanny Brawne’s was delivered to him two days late with the seal broken. The contretemps was due to the misconduct of a servant, but it was interpreted by Keats as treachery on the part of the family. At the moment he would accept no explanations or apologies. He writes of this incident to Fanny Brawne:
“My friends have behaved well to me in every instance but one, and there they have become tattlers, and inquisitors into my conduct: spying upon a secret I would rather die than share it with anybody’s confidence. For this I cannot wish them well, I care not to see any of them again. If I am the Theme, I will not be the Friend of idle Gossips. Good gods what a shame it is our Loves should be put into the microscope of a Coterie. Their laughs should not affect you (I may perhaps give you reasons some day for these laughs, for I suspect a few people to hate me well enough,for reasons I know of, who have pretended a great friendship for me) when in competition with one, who if he should never see you again would make you the Saint of his memory. These Laughers, who do not like you, who envy you for your Beauty, who would have God-bless’d me from you for ever: who were plying me with disencouragements with respect to you eternally. People are revengeful—do not mind them—do nothing but love me.”[143]
“My friends have behaved well to me in every instance but one, and there they have become tattlers, and inquisitors into my conduct: spying upon a secret I would rather die than share it with anybody’s confidence. For this I cannot wish them well, I care not to see any of them again. If I am the Theme, I will not be the Friend of idle Gossips. Good gods what a shame it is our Loves should be put into the microscope of a Coterie. Their laughs should not affect you (I may perhaps give you reasons some day for these laughs, for I suspect a few people to hate me well enough,for reasons I know of, who have pretended a great friendship for me) when in competition with one, who if he should never see you again would make you the Saint of his memory. These Laughers, who do not like you, who envy you for your Beauty, who would have God-bless’d me from you for ever: who were plying me with disencouragements with respect to you eternally. People are revengeful—do not mind them—do nothing but love me.”[143]
In his next letter to her he says:
“I shall never be able to endure any more the society of any of those who used to meet at Elm Cottage and Wentworth Place. The last two years taste like brass upon my Palate.”[144]
“I shall never be able to endure any more the society of any of those who used to meet at Elm Cottage and Wentworth Place. The last two years taste like brass upon my Palate.”[144]
The lack of self-control and the distrust seen in these extracts show that Keats was laboring under hallucinations produced by an ill mind and body; the letters from which they have been taken are unnatural, almost terrible, in their passion and rebellion against fate.
Keats moved to the residence of the Brawnes. While he was here the trouble seems to have been smoothed over, for in a letter to Hunt he says: “You will be glad to hear I am going to delay a little at Mrs. Brawne’s. I hope to see you whenever you get time, for I feel really attached to you for your many sympathies with me, and patience at all mylunes.... Your affectionate friend, John Keats.”[145]To Brown he says: “Hunt has behaved very kindly to me”; and again: “The seal-breaking business is over-blown. I think no more of it.”[146]Hunt’s reply is couched in most affectionate terms:
“Giovani [sic] Mio,“I shall see you this afternoon, and most probably every day. You judge rightly when you think I shall be glad at your putting up awhile where you are, instead of that solitary place. There are humanities in the house; and if wisdom loves to live with children round her knees (the tax-gatherer apart), sick wisdom, I think, should love to live with arms about it’s waist. I need not say how you gratify me by the impulse that led you to write a particular sentence in your letter, for you must have seen by this time how much I am attached to yourself.“I am indicating at as dull a rate as a battered finger-post in wet weather. Not that I am ill: for I am very well altogether. Your affectionate Friend, Leigh Hunt.”[147]
“Giovani [sic] Mio,
“I shall see you this afternoon, and most probably every day. You judge rightly when you think I shall be glad at your putting up awhile where you are, instead of that solitary place. There are humanities in the house; and if wisdom loves to live with children round her knees (the tax-gatherer apart), sick wisdom, I think, should love to live with arms about it’s waist. I need not say how you gratify me by the impulse that led you to write a particular sentence in your letter, for you must have seen by this time how much I am attached to yourself.
“I am indicating at as dull a rate as a battered finger-post in wet weather. Not that I am ill: for I am very well altogether. Your affectionate Friend, Leigh Hunt.”[147]
This was probably the last letter written by him to Keats. In September Keats went to Rome with Severn to escape the hardships of the winter climate, after having declined an invitation from Shelley to visit him at Pisa. In the same month, Hunt published an affectionate farewell to him inThe Indicator. An announcement of his death appeared inThe Examinerof March 25, 1821. The story of the personal relations of the two men could not be better closed than with the words of Hunt written March 8, 1821, to Severn in Rome when he believed Keats still alive:
“If he can bear to hear of us, pray tell him; but he knows it already, and can put it into better language than any man. I hear that he does not like to be told that he may get better; nor is it to be wondered at, considering his firm persuasion that he shall not survive. He can only regard it as a puerile thing, and an insinuation that he shall die. But if his persuasion should happen to be no longer so strong, or if he can now put upwith attempts to console him, tell him of what I have said a thousand times, and what I still (upon my honour) think always, that I have seen too many instances of recovery from apparently desperate cases of consumption not to be in hope to the very last. If he still cannot bear to hear this, tell him—tell that great poet and noblehearted man—that we shall all bear his memory in the most precious part of our hearts, and that the world shall bow their heads to it, as our loves do. Or if this, again, will trouble his spirit, tell him that we shall never cease to remember and love him; and that, Christian or infidel, the most sceptical of us has faith enough in the high things that nature puts into our heads, to think all who are of one accord in mind and heart are journeying to one and the same place, and shall unite somewhere or other again, face to face, mutually conscious, mutually delighted.”[148]
“If he can bear to hear of us, pray tell him; but he knows it already, and can put it into better language than any man. I hear that he does not like to be told that he may get better; nor is it to be wondered at, considering his firm persuasion that he shall not survive. He can only regard it as a puerile thing, and an insinuation that he shall die. But if his persuasion should happen to be no longer so strong, or if he can now put upwith attempts to console him, tell him of what I have said a thousand times, and what I still (upon my honour) think always, that I have seen too many instances of recovery from apparently desperate cases of consumption not to be in hope to the very last. If he still cannot bear to hear this, tell him—tell that great poet and noblehearted man—that we shall all bear his memory in the most precious part of our hearts, and that the world shall bow their heads to it, as our loves do. Or if this, again, will trouble his spirit, tell him that we shall never cease to remember and love him; and that, Christian or infidel, the most sceptical of us has faith enough in the high things that nature puts into our heads, to think all who are of one accord in mind and heart are journeying to one and the same place, and shall unite somewhere or other again, face to face, mutually conscious, mutually delighted.”[148]
The literary relations of Keats and Hunt will be considered under two heads; first, the criticism of Keats’s writings by Hunt; and second, his direct influence upon them.
On first looking into Chapman’s HomerinThe Examinerof December 1st, 1816, was embodied in an article entitled “Young Poets.” It was the first notice of Keats to appear in print and is in part as follows:
“The last of these young aspirants whom we have met with, and who promise to help the new school to revive Nature and‘To put a spirit of youth ineverything,’—is we believe, the youngest of them all, and just of age. His name is John Keats. He has not yet published anything except in a newspaper, but a set of his manuscripts was handed us the other day, and fairly surprised us with the truth of their ambition, and ardent grappling with Nature.”
“The last of these young aspirants whom we have met with, and who promise to help the new school to revive Nature and
‘To put a spirit of youth ineverything,’—
is we believe, the youngest of them all, and just of age. His name is John Keats. He has not yet published anything except in a newspaper, but a set of his manuscripts was handed us the other day, and fairly surprised us with the truth of their ambition, and ardent grappling with Nature.”
InLord Byron and Some of his Contemporaries, the last line of the same sonnet—
“Silent upon a peak in Darien”—
is called “a basis of gigantic tranquillity.”[149]
Leigh Hunt’s review of thePoemsof 1817[150]was kind and discriminating. He writes characteristically of the first poem,I stood tiptoe, that it “consists of a piece of luxury in a rural spot”; of the epistles and sonnets, that they “contain strong evidences of warm and social feelings.” This comment is quitecharacteristic of Hunt. He was as fond of finding “warm and social feelings” in the poetry of others as of putting them into his own. In his anxiety he sometimes found them when they did not exist. He continues: “The best poem is certainly the last and the longest, entitledSleep and Poetry. It originated in sleeping in a room adorned with busts and pictures [Hunt’s library], and is a striking specimen of the restlessness of the young poetical appetite, obtaining its food by the very desire of it, and glancing for fit subjects of creation ‘from earth to heaven.’ Nor do we like it the less for an impatient, and as it may be thought by some irreverend [sic] assault upon the late French school of criticism[151]and monotony.” But Hunt did not allow his affection for Keats or his approval of Keats’s poetical doctrine to blunt his critical acumen. In summarizing he says: “The very faults of Mr. Keats arise from a passion for beauties, and a young impatience to vindicate them; and as we have mentioned these, we shall refer to them at once. They may be comprised in two;—first, a tendency to notice everything too indiscriminately, and without an eye to natural proportion and effect; and second, a sense of the proper variety of versification without a due consideration of its principles.” In conclusion, the beauties “outnumber the faults a hundred fold” and “they are of a nature decidedly opposed to what is false and inharmonious. Their characteristics indeed are a fine ear, a fancy and imagination at will, and an intense feeling of external beauty in its most natural and least inexpressible simplicity.”
Hunt was disappointed withEndymionand did not hesitate to say so. Keats writes to his brothers:
“Leigh Hunt I showed my 1st book to—he allows it not much merit as a whole; says it is unnatural and made ten objections to it in the mere skimming over. He says the conversation is unnatural and too high-flown for Brother and Sister—says it should be simple, forgetting do ye mind that they are both overshadowed by a supernatural Power, and of force could not speak like Francesca in theRimini. He must first prove that Caliban’s poetry is unnatural. This with me completely overturns his objections. The fact is he and Shelley are hurt, and perhaps justly, at my not having showed them the affair officiously (sic); and from several hints Ihave had they appear much disposed to dissect and anatomize any trip or slip I may have made.—But who’s afraid? Aye! Tom! Demme if I am.”[152]
“Leigh Hunt I showed my 1st book to—he allows it not much merit as a whole; says it is unnatural and made ten objections to it in the mere skimming over. He says the conversation is unnatural and too high-flown for Brother and Sister—says it should be simple, forgetting do ye mind that they are both overshadowed by a supernatural Power, and of force could not speak like Francesca in theRimini. He must first prove that Caliban’s poetry is unnatural. This with me completely overturns his objections. The fact is he and Shelley are hurt, and perhaps justly, at my not having showed them the affair officiously (sic); and from several hints Ihave had they appear much disposed to dissect and anatomize any trip or slip I may have made.—But who’s afraid? Aye! Tom! Demme if I am.”[152]
Leigh Hunt expressed himself thus in 1828: “Endymion, it must be allowed was not a little calculated to perplex the critics. It was a wilderness of sweets, but it was truly a wilderness; a domain of young, luxuriant, uncompromising poetry.”[153]
La Belle Dame sans Merci, which appeared first inThe Indicator,[154]was accompanied with an introduction by Hunt, who says that it was suggested by Alain Chartier’s poem of the same title and “that the union of the imagination and the real is very striking throughout, particularly in the dream. The wild gentleness of the rest of the thoughts and of the music are alike old, and they are alike young.”The Indicatorof August 2 and 9, 1820, contained a review of the volume of 1820. The part dealing with philosophy in poetry is of more than passing interest:
“We wish that for the purpose of his story he had not appeared to give in to the commonplace of supposing that Apollonius’s sophistry must always prevail, and that modern experiment has done a deadly thing to poetry by discovering the nature of the rainbow, the air, etc.; that is to say, that the knowledge of natural science and physics, by showing us the nature of things, does away the imaginations that once adorned them. This is a condescension to a learned vulgarism, which so excellent a poet as Mr. Keats ought not to have made. The world will always have fine poetry, so long as it has events, passions, affections, and a philosophy that sees deeper than this philosophy. There will be a poetry of the heart, as long as there are tears and smiles: there will be a poetry of the imagination, as long as the first causes of things remain a mystery. A man who is no poet, may think he is none, as soon as he finds out the first causes of the rainbow; but he need not alarm himself:—he was none before.”[155]
“We wish that for the purpose of his story he had not appeared to give in to the commonplace of supposing that Apollonius’s sophistry must always prevail, and that modern experiment has done a deadly thing to poetry by discovering the nature of the rainbow, the air, etc.; that is to say, that the knowledge of natural science and physics, by showing us the nature of things, does away the imaginations that once adorned them. This is a condescension to a learned vulgarism, which so excellent a poet as Mr. Keats ought not to have made. The world will always have fine poetry, so long as it has events, passions, affections, and a philosophy that sees deeper than this philosophy. There will be a poetry of the heart, as long as there are tears and smiles: there will be a poetry of the imagination, as long as the first causes of things remain a mystery. A man who is no poet, may think he is none, as soon as he finds out the first causes of the rainbow; but he need not alarm himself:—he was none before.”[155]
Much the same line of discussion is reported of the conversation at Haydon’s “immortal dinner,” December 28, 1817, when Keats and Lamb denounced Sir Isaac Newton and his demolition of the things of the imagination, Keats saying he“destroyed the poetry of the rainbow by reducing it to a prism.”[156]The pictorial features of theEve of St. Agneswere particularly admired by Hunt, as one might be led to expect from the decorative detail of his own narrative poetry. The portrait of “Agnes” (sicfor Madeline) is said to be “remarkable for its union of extreme richness and good taste” and “affords a striking specimen of the sudden and strong maturity of the author’s genius. When he wroteEndymionhe could not have resisted doing too much. To the description before me, it would be a great injury either to add or to diminish. It falls at once gorgeously and delicately upon us, like the colours of the painted glass.” Of the description of the casement window, Hunt asks “Could all the pomp and graces of aristocracy with Titian’s and Raphael’s aid to boot, go beyond the rich religion of this picture, with its ‘twilight saints’ and its ‘scutcheons blushing with the blood of queens’?” Elsewhere he says that “Persian Kings would have filled a poet’s mouth with gold” for such poetry. Hunt callsHyperion[157]“a fragment, a gigantic one, like a ruin in the desert, or the bones of the mastodon. It is truly of a piece with its subject, which is the downfall of the elder gods.” Later, inImagination and Fancy, Hunt declared that Keats’s greatest poetry is to be found inHyperion. His opinion of the whole is thus summed up:
“Mr. Keats’s versification sometimes reminds us of Milton in his blank verse, and sometimes of Chapman both in his blank verse and in his rhyme; but his faculties, essentially speaking, though partaking of the unearthly aspirations and abstract yearnings of both these poets, are altogether his own. They are ambitious, but less directly so. They are moresocial, and in the finer sense of the word, sensual, than either. They are more coloured by the modern philosophy of sympathy and natural justice.Endymion, with all its extraordinary powers, partook of the faults of youth, though the best ones; but the reader ofHyperionand these other storieswould never guess that they were written at twenty.[158]The author’s versification is now perfected, the exuberances of his imagination restrained, and a calm power, the surest and loftiest of all power, takes place of the impatient workings of the younger god within him. The character of his genius is that of energy and voluptuousness, each able at will to take leave of the other, and possessing in their union, a high feeling of humanity not common to the best authors who can combine them. Mr. Keats undoubtedly takes his seat with the oldest and best of our living poets.”[159]
“Mr. Keats’s versification sometimes reminds us of Milton in his blank verse, and sometimes of Chapman both in his blank verse and in his rhyme; but his faculties, essentially speaking, though partaking of the unearthly aspirations and abstract yearnings of both these poets, are altogether his own. They are ambitious, but less directly so. They are moresocial, and in the finer sense of the word, sensual, than either. They are more coloured by the modern philosophy of sympathy and natural justice.Endymion, with all its extraordinary powers, partook of the faults of youth, though the best ones; but the reader ofHyperionand these other storieswould never guess that they were written at twenty.[158]The author’s versification is now perfected, the exuberances of his imagination restrained, and a calm power, the surest and loftiest of all power, takes place of the impatient workings of the younger god within him. The character of his genius is that of energy and voluptuousness, each able at will to take leave of the other, and possessing in their union, a high feeling of humanity not common to the best authors who can combine them. Mr. Keats undoubtedly takes his seat with the oldest and best of our living poets.”[159]
The more important division of the literary relations of the two men is the direct influence of Hunt’s work upon that of Keats.
On Keats’s prose style Hunt’s influence was very slight and can be quickly dismissed. At one time Keats, affected perhaps by Hunt’s example, thought of becoming a theatrical critic. He did actually contribute four articles toThe Champion. Keats’s favorite of Hunt’s essays,A Now, contains several passages composed by Keats. Mr. Forman considers that “the greater part of the paper is so much in the taste and humor of Keats” that he is justified in including it in his edition of Keats. He has also called attention to a passage in Keats’s letter to Haydon of April 10, 1818, which bears a striking likeness to Hunt’s occasional essay style: “The Hedges by this time are beginning to leaf—Cats are becoming more vociferous—Young Ladies who wear Watches are always looking at them. Women about forty-five think the Season very backward.”
ThePoemsof 1817 show Hunt’s influences in spirit, diction and versification. There are epistles and sonnets in the manner of Hunt.I stood tiptoe upon a little hillopens the volume with a motto from theStory of Rimini. TheSpecimen of an InductionandCalidoreso nearly approach Hunt’s work in manner, that they might easily be mistaken for it.Sleep and Poetryattacks French models as Hunt had previously done. The colloquial style of certain passages is significant of Hunt’s influence upon the poems. A few examples are:
“To peer about upon variety.”[160]“Or by the bowery clefts, and leafy shelvesGuess where the jaunty streams refresh themselves.”[161]“The ripples seem right glad to reach those cresses.”[162]“... you just now are stoopingTo pick up the keepsake intended for me.”[163]“Of this fair world, and all its gentle livers.”[164]“The evening weather was so bright, and clear,That men of health were of unusual cheer.”[165]“Linger awhile upon some bending planksThat lean against a streamlet’s rushy banks,And watch intently Nature’s gentle doings:They will be found softer than the ring-dove’s cooings.”[166]“The lamps that from the high roof’d wall were pendantAnd gave the steel a shining quite transcendent.”[167]“Or on the wavy grass outstretch’d supinely,Pry ’mong the stars, to strive to think divinely.”[168]
The following are infelicitous passages reflecting Leigh Hunt’s bad taste, especially in the description of physical appearance, or of situations involving emotion:
“... what amorous and fondling nipsThey gave each other’s cheeks.”[169]“... some lady sweetWho cannot feel for cold her tender feet.”[170]“Rein in the swelling of his ample might.”[171]“Nor will a bee buzz round two swelling peaches.”[172]“... What a kiss,What gentle squeeze he gave each lady’s hand!How tremblingly their delicate ankles spann’d!Into how sweet a trance his soul was gone,While whisperings of affectionMade him delay to let their tender feetCome to the earth; with an incline so sweetFrom their low palfreys o’er his neck they bent:And whether there were tears of languishment,Or that the evening dew had pearl’d their tresses,He felt a moisture on his cheek and blessesWith lips that tremble, and with glistening eye,All the soft luxuryThat nestled in his arms.”[173]“... Add too, the sweetnessOf thy honey’d voice; the neatnessOf thine ankle, lightly turned:With those beauties, scarce discern’dKept with such sweet privacy,That they seldom meet the eyeOf the little loves that flyRound about with eager pry.”[174]
Descriptive passages in the Huntian style are not infrequent: the opening lines from theImitation of Spenser[175]are much nearer to Hunt than to Spenser.
“Now morning from her orient chamber came,And her first footsteps touched a verdant hill,Crowning its lawny crest with amber flame,Silv’ring the untainted gushes of its rill;Which, pure from mossy beds, did down distilAnd after parting beds of simple flowers,By many streams a little lake did fill,Which round its marge reflected woven bowers,And in its middle space, a sky that never lowers.”[176]
These lines ofCalidoreshow a like resemblance:
“He bares his forehead to the cool blue sky,And smiles at the far clearness all around,Until his heart is well nigh over wound,And turns for calmness to the pleasant greenOf easy slopes, and shadowy trees that leanSo elegantly o’er the waters’ brimAnd show their blossoms trim.”[177]
A third is:
“Across the lawny fields, and pebbly water.”
Single phrases showing the influence of Hunt[178]are: “airy feel,” “patting the flowing hair,” “A Man of elegance,” “sweet-lipped ladies,” “grateful the incense,” “modest pride,” “a sun-beamy tale of a wreath,” “soft humanity,” “leafy luxury,” “pillowy silkiness,” “swelling apples,” “the very pleasant rout,” “forms of elegance.”
The following passages apparently bear as close a resemblance to each other as it is possible to find by the comparison of individual passages from the works of the two men:
“The sidelong view of swelling leafinessWhich the glad setting sun in gold doth dress”[179]
compare with:
“And every hill, in passing one by oneGleamed out with twinkles of the golden sun:For leafy was the road, with tall array.”[180]
TheEpistlesare strikingly like Hunt’s epistles in spirit, diction and metre. Mr. Colvin has pointed out that the one addressedTo George Felton Mathewwas written in November, 1815, before Keats had met Hunt and before the publication of the latter’s epistles;[181]but Keats may have known them at the time in manuscript through Clarke. The resemblances may also have been due, in part, as in other points of comparison, to an innate similarity of thought and feeling.
That Hunt’s habit of sonneteering and his preference for the Petrarcan form influenced Keats, is attested by the similarity of the latter’s sonnets to Hunt’s in form, subjects, andallusions, and by the direct references[182]to Hunt.On the Grasshopper and the Cricket[183]andTo the Nile[184]were written in contest with Hunt.To Spenseris a refusal to comply with Hunt’s request that he should write a sonnet on Spenser.[185]The title ofOn Leigh Hunt’s Poem, The Story of Rimini[186]speaks for itself.[187]
To put it briefly, thePoemsof 1817 show Hunt’s influence in more ways than any equal number of the young poet’s later verses. It is seen in Keats’s subject matter[188]and allusions; in his adoption of a colloquial style and diction; in his absorption of Hunt’s spirit in the treatment of nature and in his attitude toward women; and in his imitation and exaggerated use ofthe free heroic couplet inSleep and Poetry,I stood tiptoe,Specimen of an Inductionand other poems.
Of the poemLines on seeing a Lock of Milton’s Hair, written in January, 1818, Keats wrote in a letter to Bailey: “I was at Hunt’s the other day, and he surprised me with a real authenticated lock ofMilton’s hair. I know you would like what I wrote thereon, so here it is—as they say of a Sheep in a Nursery Book.... This I did at Hunt’s, at his request—perhaps I should have done something better alone and at home.”[189]Leigh Hunt’s three sonnets on the same subject, published inFoliage, have been already spoken of in the preceding chapter.
Endymionshows a decided decrease in the ascendancy of Hunt’s mind over Keats, for the sway of his intellectual supremacy had been shaken before suspicions arose in Keats’s mind as to the disinterestedness of his motives. What influence lingers is seen in the general theory of versification and in the diction, with some trace in matters of taste. A marvellous luxury of imagery, glimpses into the heights and depths of nature, an absorbing love of Greek fable, a deeper infusion of the ideal have superseded what Mr. Colvin has called the “sentimental chirp” of Hunt.[190]Specific passages inEndymionreminiscent of Hunt are rare, but Book III, ll. 23-30 recalls the general descriptive style in theDescent of Libertyand summarizes in a few lines pages of Hunt’s diffuse, spectacular imagery. Once or twice Keats seems to have fallen into the colloquial manner in dialogue:
“But a poor Naiad, I guess not. Farewell!I have a ditty for my hollow cell.”[191]
Again:
“I ownThis may sound strangely: but when, dearest girl,Thou seest it for my happiness, no pearlWill trespass down those cheeks. Companion fair!Wilt be content to dwell with her, to shareThis sister’s love with me? Like one resign’dAnd bent by circumstance, and thereby blindIn self-commitment, thus that meek unknown:‘Aye, but a buzzing by my ears has flown,Of jubilee to Dian:—truth I heard?Well then, I see there is no little bird.’”[192]
Occasionally there are passages in the bad taste of Hunt, as this example:
“Enchantress! tell me by this soft embrace,By the most soft completion of thy face,Those lips, O slippery blisses, twinkling eyes,And by these tenderest, milky sovereignties—These tenderest, and by the nectar wine,The passion—”[193]
Likewise:
“O that IWere rippling round her dainty fairness now,Circling about her waist, and striving howTo entice her to a dive! then stealing inBetween her luscious lips and eyelids thin.”[194]
In July, 1820, appeared the volumeLamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes and other Poems. The lingering influence of Hunt is seen in a fondness for the short poetic tale, in the direct and simple narrative style, and in the return inLamiato the use of the heroic couplet; but that, along with the other poems of the volume, is free from the Huntian eccentricities of manner and diction found in Keats’s earlier works. He had come into his own. In treatment,Lamiais almost faultless in technique and in matters of taste; although Mr. Colvin has pointed out as an exception the first fifteen lines of the second book, which he says have Leigh Hunt’s “affected ease and fireside triviality.”[195]One of the few occurrences of Hunt’s manner is seen in theEve of St. Agnes.
“Paining with eloquence her balmy side.”[196]
The famous passage in theEve of St. Agnesdescribing all manner of luscious edibles is very suggestive of one in Hunt’sBacchus and Ariadnewhich enumerates articles of the samekind.[197]It is in this latter poem and in theStory of Riminithat Hunt’s power of description most nearly approximates to that of Keats. In 1831, in theGentle Armour, Hunt is the imitator of Keats, as Mr. Colvin has already pointed out.[198]
The peculiarities of Keats’s diction are, in the main, two-fold, and may each be traced to a direct influence: first, archaisms in the manner of Spenser[199]and Chatterton; second, colloquialisms and deliberate departures from established usage in the employment and formation of words, in imitation of Leigh Hunt. Keats’s theory so far as he had one, is set forth in a passage in one of his letters: “I shall never become attached to a foreign idiom, so as to put it into my writings. The Paradise Lost, though so fine in itself, is a corruption of our language. It should be kept as it is, unique, a curiosity, a beautiful and grand curosity, the most remarkable production of the world; a northern dialect accommodating itself to Greek and Latin inversions and intonations. The purest English, I think—or what ought to be the purest—is Chatterton’s.”[200]
Keats’sPoemsof 1817 show Hunt’s influence in diction more strongly than any of his later works. In the majority of instances, this influence is reflected in the principles of usage rather than in the actual usages, although words and phrases used by Hunt are occasionally found in the writings of Keats. The tendency to a colloquial vocabulary is seen in such words and combinations as jaunty, right glad, balmy pain, leafy luxury,[201]delicious,[202]tasteful, gentle doings, gentle livers, soft floatings, frisky leaps, lawny mantle, patting, busy spirits. Among these words, leafy, balmy, lawny, patting, nest, tiptoe, and variations of “taste” were special favorites with Hunt. A few expressions only of this kind, as “nest,” “honey feel,” “infant’s gums,” are found inEndymion, and almost none at all in the later poems.
Keats used peculiar words with so much greater felicity and in so much greater profusion than Hunt, exceeding in richness and individuality of vocabulary most of the poets of his own time, that one is forced to believe that Spenser’s influence rather than Hunt’s was dominant here. Breaches of taste are confined almost entirely to thePoemsof 1817.
Ordinary words used peculiarly include “nips” (they gave each other’s cheeks), “core” (for heart) and “luxury”[203](with a wrong connotation), nouns and adjectives employed as verbs, and verbs as nouns and adjectives. These devices likewise cannot be credited to Hunt without reservation, since both Spenser and Milton used them; but there is little doubt that in this instance Hunt was an inciting and sustaining influence. Keats resorted to such artifices frequently and continued to do so to the end. Instances of nouns and adjectives employed as verbs are: pennanc’d, luting, passion’d, neighbour’d, syllabling, companion’d, labrynth, anguish’d, poesied, vineyard’d, woof’d, loaned, medicin’d, zon’d, mesh, pleasure, legion’d, companion, green’d, gordian’d, character’d, finn’d, forest’d, tusk’d, monitor. Verbs employed as nouns and adjectives are: shine, which occurs five times, feel, seeing, hush, pry and amaze.
More examples of coined compounds, nouns and adjectives, are to be found in Keats than in Hunt; in his better work as well as in his early productions. A few are: cirque-couchant, milder-mooned, tress-lifting, flitter-winged, silk-pillowed, death-neighing, break-covert, palsy-twitching, high-sorrowful, sea-foamy, amber-fretted, sweet-lipped, lush-leaved.
The last principle is the coining, or choice of, adjectives inyanding; of adverbs inly, when, in many instances, adjectives and adverbs already existed formed on the same stem. The frequent use of words with these weak endings gives a very diffuse effect at times in Keats’s early poems. The following are examples: fenny, fledgy, rushy, lawny, liny, nervy, pipy, paly, palmy, towery, sluicy, surgy, scummy, mealy, sparry, heathy, rooty, slumbery, bowery, bloomy, boundly, palmy, surgy, spermy, ripply, spangly, spherey, orby, oozy, skeyey, clayey, and plashy.[204]Adjectives iningare: cheering, hushing, breeding, combing, dumpling, sphering, tenting, toying, baaing, far-spooming, peering (hand), searing (hand), shelving, serpenting. Adverbs are: scantly, elegantly, refreshingly, freshening (lave), hoveringly, greyly, cooingly, silverly, refreshfully, whitely, drowningly, wingedly, sighingly, windingly, bearingly.
These statements are not very conclusive proof of the frequent occurrences of the same words in the poems of the two men. They are questionable even in regard to the principles of usage themselves, since poets of the same period or young poets may possess the same tendencies. Yet in the light of their relations already discussed the similarity of a number of principles seems convincing proof that Hunt influenced Keats considerably in theprinciplesof diction in his first volume and occasionally in the selection of individual words; and that Keats never entirely freed himself from some of Hunt’s peculiarities. Shelley, in writing ofHyperionto Mrs. Hunt, spoke of the “bad sort of style which is becoming fashionable among those who fancy that they are imitatingHunt and Wordsworth.”[205]Medwin reported Shelley as saying “We are certainly indebted to the Lakists for a more simple and natural phraseology; but the school that has sprung out of it, have spawned a set of words neither Chaucerian nor Spencerian (sic), words such as ‘gib,’ and ‘flush,’ ‘whiffling,’ ‘perking up,’ ‘swirling,’ ‘lightsome and brightsome’ and hundreds of others.”[206]
Keats, following the lead of Hunt, used the free heroic couplet in several of the 1817 poems with a license even greater than Hunt’s. InEndymionhe indulged in further vagaries of rhythm and metre that Hunt never dreamed of and in fact greatly disapproved of. Hunt said that “Endymionhad no versification.”[207]In its want of couplet and line units, this is not very far from the truth. Writing of it again in 1828, he says: “The great fault ofEndymionnext to its unpruned luxuriance, (or before it, rather, for it was not a fault on the right side,) was the wilfulness of its rhymes. The author had a just contempt for the monotonous termination of everyday couplets; he broke up his lines in order to distribute the rhyme properly; but going only upon the ground of his contempt, and not having settled with himself any principles of versification, the very exuberance of his ideas led him to make use of the first rhymes that offered; so that, by a new meeting of effects, the extreme was artificial, and much more obtrusive than the one under the old system. Dryden modestly thought, that a rhyme had often helped him to a thought. Mr. Keats in the tyranny of his wealth, forced his rhymes to help him, whether they would or not; and they obeyed him, in the most singular manner, with equal promptitude and ungainliness.”[208]Endymionhas been thought by some critics, to have been written under the metrical influence of Chamberlayne’sPharronida. In the number of run-on lines and couplets—a scheme nearer blank verse than the couplet—there is certainly a striking correspondence. Mr. Forman thinks thatKeats knew the poem. Mr. Colvin and Mr. De Selincourt can see no real likeness. There is no proof as yet discovered that Keats ever heard of it.
InLamia, after the extreme reaction inEndymion, Keats approached nearer to the classic form of the couplet used by Dryden, but still with greater freedom in structure than appears in either Dryden or Hunt. From the evidence of Brown it is probable that Keats imitated Dryden directly and not through the medium of Hunt’s work, but it is very likely that Hunt directed him there in the first instance for a model. Mr. Palgrave says of the metre ofLamiathat Keats “admirably found and sustained the balance between a blank verse treatment of the ‘Heroic’ and the epigrammatic form carried to such perfection by Pope.”[209]Leigh Hunt said that “the lines seem to take pleasure in the progress of their own beauty like sea nymphs luxuriating through the water.”[210]
In conclusion, Keats’s early and late employment of the couplet was marked always by greater freedom in the use of run-on couplets and lines, and in the handling of the cæsura than Dryden’s or Hunt’s; he was at first slower than Hunt to employ the triplet and the Alexandrine, but he later adopted them in a larger measure; and he introduced the run-on paragraph and the hemistich independently of Hunt.
Shelley
Finnerty Case—Correspondence of Hunt and Shelley—Their Political and Religious Sympathy—Hunt’s Defense of Shelley—Hunt’s Italian Journey—Shelley’s Death—Hunt’s Criticism—Literary Influence—Shelley’s Estimate of Hunt.
The friendship of Shelley and Leigh Hunt is the simple story of an intimacy founded on a common endowment of independence of thought and of capacity for self-sacrifice. Although both were sensitive and shrinking by nature, and preferred to dwell in an isolated world of books and dreams, yet for the sake of abstract principles and for love of humanity, both expended much time and endured much pain in the arena of public strife.
InThe Examinersof February 18 and 24, 1811, appeared articles by Hunt on the Finnerty case. Peter Finnerty, Hunt’s successor as editor ofThe Statesman, had been prosecuted and imprisoned on the charge of libelling Lord Castlereagh. Hunt’s defense drew Shelley’s attention to the case and may have inspired him, it has been suggested, to write hisPolitical Essay on the Existing State of Things. The proceeds went to Finnerty.[211]On March 2 Shelley subscribed to the Finnerty fund and, on the same day, wrote Hunt, whom he had never met, a letter from Oxford, congratulating him on his acquittal from a third charge of libel and proposing that an association should be formed to establish “rational liberty,” to resist the enemies of justice, and to protect each other.[212]
Shelley’s political creed was, in the main, that of William Godwin, with an admixture of Holbach, Volney and Rousseau at first hand.[213]In English philosophic literature he knew Berkeley, Hume, Reid and Locke. His watchword was the cry of the French Revolution, liberty, equality and fraternity, to be gained, not by violence and bloodshed, but by a steady and unyielding resistance of the masses against the corrupt institutions of church and state. Like Godwin, he believed man capable of his own redemption and, with tradition and tyranny overthrown and reason and nature enthroned, he hoped for universal justice and ultimate perfectibility of mankind. His poetry and his prose represent a development from the impassioned and imaginative enthusiasm of an uncompromising youth, who would single-handed revolutionize the world in the twinkling of an eye, to the saner hope of a man who took somewhat into account the necessarily gradual nature of ethical evolution. His chief fallacy lay in the failure to recognize evil as an inherent force in human nature and to acknowledge sect and state, to which he attributed the origin of all error, as inventions of man’s ingenuity. Neither did he perceive the necessity of certain restrictions on the individual for the preservation of law and order. He believed in no distinctions of rank except those based on individual talent and virtue. He wrote in 1811: “I am no aristocrat, nor ‘crat’ at all, but vehemently long for the time when men may dare to live in accordance with Nature and Reason—in consequence with Virtue, to which I firmly believe that Religion and its establishments, Polity and its establishments, are the formidable though destructible barriers.”[214]Shelley knew of Leigh Hunt first as a political writer of considerable importance. In this respect he never ceased to admire him or to be influenced byThe Examinerin the campaign against government corruption. Yet his own equipment of mind and training, visionary as his theories seem, gave him a power of speculation and grasp of situationthat ignored the limitations of time and space, while Hunt, with his narrower view, never got beyond the petty and immediate details of one nation or of one age.
The social improvements which Shelley advocated were Catholic Emancipation, brought about later, as has been pointed out by Symonds, by the very means which Shelley foresaw and prophesied; reform of parliamentary representation[215]similar to that carried into effect in 1832, 1867 and 1882; freedom of the press[216]and repeal of the union of Great Britain and Ireland; the abolition of capital punishment and of war.[217]During the fourteen years of Hunt’s editorship, among the reforms for which he fought inThe Examinerwere the first three of these measures. He denounced capital punishment and war in the same paper and later in his poemCaptain Sword and Captain Pen.[218]
Shelley’s moral code was based on an idealized sense of justice, and was a kind of “natural piety.”[219]With one marked exception, he seems to have been true to the pursuit of it, both in his standards of conduct and in his relations with others. His life was a model of generosity, purity of thought, and unselfish devotion. Hunt reported Shelley as having said: “What a divine religion might be found out, if charity were really the principle of it, instead of faith.”[220]He was atheist only in the sense of discarding the dogmas of theology and of superstition, and in his spirit of scientific inquiry. He did not deny the existence in nature of an all-pervading spirit. Hunt thought the popular misconception of Shelley’s opinions was due to his misapplication of the names of the Deity and to his identification of them with vulgar superstitions. Of Shelley’s attitude he wrote: “His want of faith in the letter, and his exceeding faith in the spirit of Christianity, formed a comment, the one on the other, very formidable to those whochose to forget what Scripture itself observes on that point.”[221]Whether or notShelleybelieved in immortality is still a vexed question and is likely to remain so, since he had not reached convictions sufficiently stable to permit a formal statement on his part. Many of the passages inAdonaiswould lead one to believe that he did; certainly he did, like Hunt, cling to the idea of the persistence, in some form or other, of the good and the beautiful. The close conformity of their views is seen in the latter’s two sonnets inFoliage[222]addressed to Shelley, where the poet condemns the degrading notions so prevalent concerning the Deity and celebrates the Spirit of Beauty and Goodness in all things. But, in religion as in politics, Shelley was bolder and more speculative than Hunt.
The fine of £1,000 and imprisonment of the Hunt brothers in 1813 drew from Shelley a vehement protest. In a letter to Hogg[223]he lamented the inadequacy of Lord Brougham’s defense and fairly boiled with indignation at “the horrible injustice and tyranny of the sentence” and pronounced Hunt “a brave, a good, and an enlightened man.” He started a subscription with twenty pounds, and later he must have offered to pay the entire fine, for Hunt recorded in hisAutobiographythat Shelley had made him “a princely offer,”[224]which he declined, as he did not need it. The offer was actuated solely by a hatred of oppression, for the two men had little or no personal knowledge of each other at the time.
It is impossible to decide the exact date of their first meeting. Hunt says that it took place before the indictment for libel on the Prince Regent.[225]This evidence would make it fall sometime between March, 1812, the date of Shelley’s letter mentioned above, and February, 1813, the beginning of the incarceration. But a letter from Shelley to Hunt dated December 7, 1813, demanding if he had made the statement that Milton had died an atheist, from its very formal tone, leads one to believe that they had not met up to that time and that Hunt, writing from memory many years afterwards, made amistake. Thornton Hunt gives as the immediate cause of the two men coming together, Shelley’s application to Mr. Rowland Hunter, the publisher and stepfather of Mrs. Hunt, for advice regarding the publication of a poem. He referred Shelley to Leigh Hunt. The next meeting was in Surrey Street Gaol. Thornton Hunt, in a delightful reminiscence of Shelley,[226]says that he had no recollection of him among his father’s visitors in prison, but he remembered perfectly the latter’s description of his “angelic” appearance, his classic thoughts, and his dreams for the emancipation of mankind. The real intimacy began after Shelley’s return from the continent in 1816 when Shelley, in search of a house before he settled at Marlow, was the guest of Hunt at Hampstead during a part of December.[227]A close companionship followed uninterruptedly for two years until Shelley went to Italy, and there are recorded in the letters and journals of each many pleasant evenings at Hampstead and at Marlow, filled with poetry and music, with talks on art and trials of wit, with dinners and theater parties. Mary Shelley and Mrs. Hunt became as great friends as their husbands.
When Harriet committed suicide and Shelley went up to London to institute proceedings for possession of their children, Hunt remained constantly with him and gave him as much sympathy and support as it is possible for one fellow-being to extend to another whom all the world has deserted.[228]He attended the Chancery suit and stated Shelley’s position inThe Examiner.[229]This sympathy and support, given Shelley in his hour of greatest need and desolation, have never been sufficiently valued in a comparative estimate of the relative indebtedness of the two men. If Shelley gave freely of his money, Hunt, devoid ofworldlygoods, gave unstintingly, to the detriment of his reputation, of those things which money cannot purchase. That he incurred the displeasure of men in power, and ran the risk of being misunderstood by the public in befriending Shelley, did not deter him for an instant.
During 1817 Shelley made the acquaintance, through Hunt, of the Cockney circle, including Keats, Reynolds, Hazlitt, Brougham, Novello and Horace Smith. The last-named became one of Shelley’s most trusted friends.[230]These new friends enlarged his list of acquaintances considerably, for up to this time he seems to have had no friends except Godwin, Hogg and Peacock.
In the early spring of 1818, the Shelleys went to Italy, melancholy with the thought of separation from the Hunts.[231]The letters from Shelley to Hunt during the next four years form an important part of Shelley’s correspondence.
The part played by Shelley in the invitation extended to Hunt to join Lord Byron and himself in Italy and to become one of the editors of a periodical will be treated minutely in the next chapter. It is sufficient here to say that he was actuated by a desire to better Hunt’s finances and to enjoy his society—a pleasure he had been pining for ever since they had been separated, and, in case of a return to England, regarded as the one joy “among all the other sources of regret and discomfort with which England abounds for me.... Shaking hands with you is worth all the trouble; the rest is clear loss.”[232]Further, he knew that Hunt longed for Italy, and he wished to help Byron in the cause of liberalism. To bring both ends about, he shouldered a burden that he was ill able to bear. An annuity of £200 for the support of his two children, an annuity of £100 to Peacock, perpetual demand for large sums from Godwin, occasional assistance rendered the Gisbornes, partial support of Jane Claremont, loans to Byron, and the support of his family, were the drains already upon him—met, in the main by money raised onpost obitsat half value.
The amount of Hunt’s indebtedness to Shelley can be estimated only approximately. The first reference to a financial transaction between them after the “princely offer”[233]is to be found in Mary Shelley’s letter of December 6, 1816, in which she wondered that Hunt had not acknowledged the “receipt of so large a sum.” Professor Dowden thinks this may be an allusion to Shelley’s response to an appeal for the poor of Spitalfields which had appeared inThe Examinerfive days previously.[234]Shelley’s offers to Hunt to borrow £100 from Byron[235]and to stand security for a loan from Charles Cowden Clarke,[236]and an attempt to borrow from Samuel Rogers[237]are not developed by any further facts, but it is necessary to take note of them in a general estimate. Before leaving England, Shelley arranged with Ollier for a loan of £100 for Hunt, a debt which was later liquidated by the sale of theLiterary Pocket Book.[238]At some time before leaving England, Shelley also gave Hunt in one year £1,400[239]for the liquidation of his debts, which money was, Medwin says, borrowed from Horace Smith.[240]Unfortunately for Shelley, the sum was insufficientto extricate Hunt from his difficulties. Miss Mitford gives the amount as £1,500, instead of £1,400, and adds that Shelley’s furniture and bedding were swept off to pay Hunt’s creditors;[241]the inaccuracy of the first statement and the lack of any evidence to support the second, lead one to doubt the story. But it is true that Shelley’s income at the time was only £1,000. Even when so far away as Italy, Hunt’s money troubles weighed heavily upon Shelley in a continual regret that he could not set him entirely free from his creditors;[242]he feared that the incredible exertions Hunt was making onThe Indicatorand onThe Examiner, and the privations that he endured, would undermine his health.[243]When Hunt finally decided to go to Italy, Shelley assumed, as a matter of course, the chief responsibility of providing the means.